Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams go,
Life is a barron field, covered with snow.


My 10th grade English teacher made us memorize this poem, and she said that we would never forget the words. We were all like, "Bull [censored]. No way we will remember this crap."

Now, sixteen years later, and I still can't delete it from my memory.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's too bad. That's a pretty shitty poem to have stuck in your head.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

very nice.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

i guess i will post the obvious

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

there is also a sonnet that is great. 116 is the most well-known but i like this other one better. something about a ship on the sea. whatever, i will find it.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really like this poem except for the last couplet. Self-referential remarks* in poetry (however humbling) usually don't fit quite right. "Trees" is no exception.

*Poems that are mostly self-referential are an entirely different story.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

From Pablo Neruda's "La Muerta"

If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but I shall stay alive,

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas

[/ QUOTE ]

and, as a prose companion to this, from James Joyce's "The Dead:"

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
"He bangs his fists against the posts,
And still insists he sees the ghosts"

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the Beastie Boy lyric, it's actually "thrusts" not "bangs." If it's not, please ignore me.

-McGee

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"He bangs his fists against the posts,
And still insists he sees the ghosts"

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the Beastie Boy lyric, it's actually "thrusts" not "bangs." If it's not, please ignore me.

-McGee

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I read it years ago in a Stephen King non-fiction work called 'dance macabre', well before the BBs. They must have got it from whereever King got his from. And I could remember it wrong, it might well be 'thrusts'.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En réponse à:</font><hr />
Poems written by masochists flop like cows in the meadow -
Take pity on me, they cry, pay attention, pity on me -
I am so sensitive to nature and full of milk.
Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom
And leave a glow equal in its pride to the gait of the Sadist
Who stuck the pin and walked away.

[/ QUOTE ]
From Norman Mailer's only book of poetry, Deaths for the Ladies.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

... I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too far from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

Coyote--Joni Mitchell

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

One of my favorite poems is from Paul Verlaine. This poem was the one broacasted over the radio in occupied France to warn the Resistance that the D-day attack had started.

The long sobs
of the violins
Of autumn
Wound my heart
With a monotonous
Languor.

- Song of Autumn - Poèmes saturniens

This one is also one of my favorite. I was abe to find a good translation for it so I am posting it. It is from Paul Verlaine as well:

Tears fall in my heart
As rain upon the city;
What is this languor
That pierces my heart?
Oh, the gentle sound of the rain
By land and on the roofs!
For a heart that is empty
Oh, the song of the rain! Tears fall without reason
In this heart that is disheartened.
What? No betrayal? . . .
This grief is without reason. It is indeed the worst pain
Not to know why
Without love and without hatred
My heart suffers so much pain!

- Ariettes oubliées

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Tears fall in my heart
As rain upon the city;
What is this languor
That pierces my heart?
Oh, the gentle sound of the rain
By land and on the roofs!
For a heart that is empty
Oh, the song of the rain! Tears fall without reason
In this heart that is disheartened.
What? No betrayal? . . .
This grief is without reason. It is indeed the worst pain
Not to know why
Without love and without hatred
My heart suffers so much pain!

[/ QUOTE ]

This made me very sad.

One of my favorites:

The beauty of a rose in bloom art naught when compared with thou.
For a rose hath not thy soul.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Tears fall in my heart
As rain upon the city;
What is this languor
That pierces my heart?
Oh, the gentle sound of the rain
By land and on the roofs!
For a heart that is empty
Oh, the song of the rain! Tears fall without reason
In this heart that is disheartened.
What? No betrayal? . . .
This grief is without reason. It is indeed the worst pain
Not to know why
Without love and without hatred
My heart suffers so much pain!

[/ QUOTE ]

This made me very sad.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is a very well written poem that describes very well a chapter of my life.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
and, as a prose companion to this, from James Joyce's "The Dead:"

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, and that can lead us to TS Eliot:

...Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


What the hell. Here's the entire glorious thing (easily my favorite poem):

The Hollow Men

I


We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar


Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;


Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II


Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.


Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --


Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III


This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.


Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV


The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms


In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river


Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V


Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow


For Thine is the Kingdom


Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


Life is very long


Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the


This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Fantastic poem, but I'm sticking to Prufrock as my favorite T.S. Eliot, which means very high among all my favorites. That one has line after stunning line, and a great overall direction. Though I really like The Hollow Men an awful lot, and some phrases really leap out at you in their brilliance. That's one of the things I like about Eliot; he can write lines that absolutely blow you away when you read them and make you wonder if you've ever read anything that good before.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Here's a couple lines, not so much my favourites, but...unreal..

first, Arnolds, "Dover Beach"

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is one of the most impressive poem's i've ever read

but, without a question, my favourite poet (and artists) is Bob Dylan:

From "Vision's of Johanna"

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place


From "The Time's they are a-changin"

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

and there's hundred's more..

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The more I think about it, the more I think Rushmore and I are the same person, a few years apart. Except one of us is a bit more wealthy.

The Hollow Men was my favorite poem in college... might still be. I did a musical setting of it in my senior thesis that was probably the best piece of music I wrote. Wish I could hear that played again.

Anyway, it's a criminal shame that we've made it so far in this thread without some Bukowski. Here's a later work:

a poem for swingers

I like women who haven't lived with too many men.
I don't expect virginity but I simply prefer women
who haven't been rubbed raw by experience.

there is a quality about women who choose
men sparingly;
it appears in their walk
in their eyes
in their laughter and in their
gentle hearts.

women who have had too many men
seem to choose the next one
out of revenge rather than with
feeling.

when you play the field selfishly everything
works against you;
one can't insist on love or
demand affection.
you're finally left with whatever
you have been willing to give
which often is:
nothing.

some women are delicate things
some women are delicious and
wondrous.

if you want to piss on the sun
go ahead
but please leave the good women
alone.

hymn from the hurricane


paid my dues in Macon, went crazy in Tennessee,
found the love of God in St. Louis,
got the hell out of there.
found the whore with the heart of gold in Glendale,
ran away from that.
floundered awhile along the Mason-Dixon Line,
came to my senses in New Orleans.
mailed a letter home, and got knocked on my ass in Houston.
started sitting at the center of the bar instead of at the end.
got rolled 3 times in a row somewhere near the Appalachians.
married a woman with a crippled neck who died unclaimed in India.
name of the first horse I ever bet on was Royal Serenade who died
long ago .
what glistens best for me is the first drink of the night.
I will hear forever the wheels of the Greyhound bus carrying me
to nowhere.
J. Cash sang "I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die" as the
cons cheered.
celled with public enemy no. one in Moyamensing Prison (he
snored at night).
my women tell me that I am insane because of my parents.
sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
my favorite color is yellow and my backbone is the same.
nine-tenths of Humanity embraces self-pity and the other tenth
makes them look pitiful.
the rat and the roach are the most powerful reminders of
enduring life.
what was always best for me was seing fear in the eyes of the
bully.
the saddest thing was old women watering geraniums at 2 p.m.
and what I learned was to do it now inspite of the consequenses.
and what I also learned was that something once said could
quickly become untrue.

I paid my dues in Macon, went crazy in Tennessee,
found myself in the second floor of a hotel in Albuquerque (the bed
bugs ate well).
found myself on a track gang going west and didn't yearn for
a seat in Congress.
I remember the girl who showed me her panties when I was 8
years old.

I remember the red streetcars, and the vacant lots between
the houses in Los Angeles.
I remember that the girl who showed her panties to half the town
had
showed me first.
I was always a coward who didn't care.
I was always a brave man who didn't try to win.
I found that screwing women was a social duty like making
money.

I paid my dues in Tennessee and went crazy in Macon.

I had no idea of the black-white game and
sit on the back of a streetcar in New Orleans.
I hate politics and I hate the obvious answers.
I paid my dues in East Kansas City.
I beat the hell out of a 6-foot-4 240-pound guy in Philly
I stayed on the floor on Miami after a 150-pounder decked me
with his first punch.
the state of the mind is the State of the Union.
what you want to do and what you've got to do is the same thing.
I once watched a sailor fight an alligator and the alligator quit.

only boring people are bored.
only the wrong flags fly.
the person who tells you they are not God really thinks otherwise.
God is the invention of failures.
the only hell is where you are.

passed through Dallas and rammed through Pasadena.
I never paid my dues because there was nobody to collect them.
I've smashed two full-length mirrors and they are still looking for
me.
I've walked into places where no man should ever go.
I've been mercilessly beaten and left for dead.
I have lumps all over my scull from blackjacks and etc.
the angels pissed themselves in fear.
I am a beautiful person.

and you are.
and she is.
as is the yellow thumping of the sun and the glory of the world.


---
NT

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Ginsburg, from 'America':

"I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling."

Whitman (writing about his poetry):

"As idly drifting down the ebb
such ripples, half caught voices,
echo from the shore"

Hunter Thompson (it's from 'the great shark hunt'- can't quite remember the rest of the verse, but...):

"bend her in two like a saftey pin"

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

"For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The more I think about it, the more I think Rushmore and I are the same person, a few years apart. Except one of us is a bit more wealthy.

The Hollow Men was my favorite poem in college... might still be. I did a musical setting of it in my senior thesis that was probably the best piece of music I wrote. Wish I could hear that played again.

Anyway, it's a criminal shame that we've made it so far in this thread without some Bukowski. Here's a later work:


[/ QUOTE ]

I consider that a compliment, sir.

And yes, absolutely, Bukowski cannot be passed over in this thread. When I first started reading Bukowski in the 80's, my initial reaction was that it was a little gimmicky. The poems were obviously very free of restriction, and I assumed this was the appeal that most readers were attracted to.

But when you look further, he's brilliant, and certainly not to be overlooked here.

In many ways, I cannot help but think of Raymond Carver when I read Bukowski. Obviously, Carver's forte was stories (which is not to say that I don't re-read Erections, Exhibitions, etc. every two years or so), but there is much of the same sentiment, and masterfully crafted. They obviously had the booze in common, but that's not what does it.

If you love Bukowski's stuff, and you haven't read Carver's stories, you really should.

P.S. I didn't know you were wealthy.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

THE GOOD-MORROW.
by John Donne

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Think that beauty will not stay
With you always, but away,
And that tyrannizing face
That now holds such perfect grace
Will both changed and ruined be;
So frail is all things as we see,

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"

[/ QUOTE ]

Kipling's bankroll management was awful, well known fact.

Mack

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Blake, from America: a Prophecy

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their
stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk &amp; dry'd,
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds &amp; bars are burst.
Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens &amp; laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years,
Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressor's scourge.
They look behind at every step &amp; believe it is a dream,
Singing, 'The Sun has left his blackness, &amp; has found a fresher
morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear &amp; cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion &amp; Wolf shall cease.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Of course one should not have to remind
That Busey is unfairly maligned
Eyes show menace beneath
With his great giant teeth
And he's totally out of his mind

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Her bouquet cleaved his hardened shell.
And fondled his muscled heart.
He embibed her glistening spell...
just before the other shoe...fell.

http://www.nutmusic.com/alzo/images/wayne_knight.jpg

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Town of the Sound of a Twig Breaking
from The Life of Towns
by Anne Carson




Their faces I thought were knives.
The way they pointed them at me.
And waited.
A hunter is someone who listens.
So hard to his prey it pulls the weapon.
Out of his hand and impales.
Itself.

Scott

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

One stanza from The Waking by Theordore Roethke, featured in the book Dreamweaver and Slaughterhouse Five, I believe...



This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.
What falls away is always, and is near.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Don't turn around, oh oh..
DerKomissar's in town, oh oh.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful

edit: actually, any line(s) from this poem make my top ten.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Written in an outhouse:

Here I sit, broken hearted,
Paid a nickel and only farted.

Next time, take a chance.
Save the nickel and crap your pants.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Rilke is awesome.

Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.

And another one that I couldn't find an author for.

When God comes to me I will be shaking. Gun loaded on my knee, my fingers waiting. Gonna tell him I was born, mistaken, then I´m gonna let my fingers slip. God help my shaking hand, I can see your light, they´re lining up the dead. Gonna take another sip of your soul, my favorite sinner.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

This is amazing. A post in OOT about poetry that has gone about 80 replies with little-to-no haters.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

OOT can move you sometimes.

Or your bowels, at least.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

More favorites

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just
Ourselves And Immortality.

Emily Dickinson

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had.

Gary Jules

I drink to our ruined house, to the dolor of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities; that the world is brutal and coarse, that God, in fact, has not saved us.



Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page.
They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day.
Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then.
Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

THEMES ON LOVE
Grading themes on love at M.I.T.,
one-man Symposium at 3
a.m., across the court I saw a light;
another office-holder working late.
While Plato on a silver pillow rode
above the waves of pre-sophistic prose,
I jotted teacher's notions that were not
as brave as our two lamps against the glut
of dawn. But when I clicked mine off
his too at once was gone, had been
my echo in a distant sheen
of glass; had been my own, and I
was lonely then, and wrote
these English words.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Lot of great poems in this thread... This one combines my two favorite things:

Ooh My Soul

—Little Richard
By Charles Harper Webb

By night, ghosts roam Aunt Ermyn’s
elm-shrouded, hundred-year-old home.
By day, my cousin Pete, just out of high school,
combs his ducktail and keeps time
to records with his creaky rocking chair.
I’m in the hall, creating all-star teams
of baseball cards when, blaring
through Pete’s open door, I hear . . .
war drums? Or is it a runaway train?
Keepa knockin’ but you cain’t come in,
then squeals like tires around a curve.
Those chugging drums, smoking piano,
squawking duck-call saxophones
make me feel like an oil rig ready to blow.
I see wells pumping, teeter-totters bumping,
giant turtle-heads working out and in
as bronco riders wave tall hats in the air.
I see girls twirling, dresses swirling
high over their underwear,
guys doing splits, or inch-worming
across the floor.
It makes me want
to slam my head back and forth
like a paddle ball—to jump, shout, bang
my hands on walls, and flap them
in the air—to fall onto the ground
and writhe, flail, roar like Johnny Cerna
in his famous Kiddieland tantrum.
Keepa knockin’ but you cain’t come in,
the preacher howls. But I am in.
I’m in the living room, Bandstand on tv,
Dad ranting, “. . . goddamn Congo beat!”
I’m in the back seat of his Ford
a decade later, learning what that beat
could be. I’m in my first band, hoarse
from screaming “Long Tall Sally.”
I’m in my college dorm, trying to jam
that wild abandon into poems.
I’m in my car, heading for work,
when “Good Golly, Miss Molly!”
catapults out of my Blaupunkt stereo.
I’m walking into Pete’s bedroom,
where I’ve never dared to go. Oh,
womp bompalumomp, a lomp bam boom!
I’m not thinking in words, but I know
I’ve spent my seven years rehearsing
how to feel this way. It’s more exciting
than a touchdown any day, or a home run,
a gunfight, hurricane waves at Galveston,
a five-pound bass on a cane pole.
“What is that?” I ask Pete. He says,
“Rock-and-roll.”